By My Design
by PikaCheeka
Summary: Shortly after being kidnapped, a conversation with Axel reveals to Kairi something about the Organization, the world, and herself. Not Axel x Kairi exactly, more of an understanding between them.


This fic ran away from me. It's quite that simple. I was bored and decided "Hey, why not do a KH fic for the hell of it?" because I already had half a dozen ideas. So I shifted through them and decided to start with this one because it was short and simple. It's still fairly short and simple, but it went a lot farther than I intended. And KH fic just ate my soul. Because now I have more fic ideas for a fandom than I have had since Harry Potter six years ago, and I have a whole notebook in my room already half-filled with junk. I have no control over my fics, which is kind of pathetic. So I guess we'll see how you all like this one, and then there will be more to come. Like most female KH fans, I am hopelessly drawn to Axel, so most of my fics will revolve around him.

Kairi POV, if you can't figure that out. This is a rarity for me, because everything else I'm working on is Axel POV. But Kairi is melodramatic, and that's fun to write sometimes. I understand that she's not a popular character among Axel fans, but I'm hoping this fic will change some of that. I think she's damn cool, actually. And before you all blow my brains out, this isn't exactly a Kairi x Axel either. I'm not THAT weird. What is it though? I don't know, so just read it.

By My Design

PikaCheeka

He pulled me into the Darkness. I hadn't gone intentionally, like he claimed. He only left me no choice. But the funny thing was, once I was there, I realized that it wasn't quite the Darkness I had believed. And that was why it scared me.

"So, Kairi, do you see it yet? How we can be friends, being so alike? Both separated from the one we most care about?" he sneered, twisting my arm and throwing the words at me as if desperate to be rid of them.

"What do you want?" I snapped, trying to pull away from him though I knew it was useless. He was hurting me. And scaring me.

"I want you to bring him to me."

My heart lurched and I stumbled. He didn't even falter, only yanked me upright like I was nothing and continued walking down the hallway. Sora? Why did he want Sora? Why did everyone want Sora all of a sudden? Didn't they know that the Keyblade would only work for him?

"It isn't that." he laughed, slightly mad and all too aware of my thoughts. "It's not your darling little Sora I want."

"If it's Riku, you can forget it! He's not going to fall for it again!" I cried out. I didn't know if I could believe it though. But I was desperate to defend him, to not let him be drawn into the Darkness again.

"Roxas."

That wasn't what I expected. "I don't know who that is." Relieved.

"Well aren't we the beautiful little liar." he stopped so suddenly that I whipped around him, smashing into his chest as he jerked me bodily towards a door, opening it and sliding in.

And then we were outside. I didn't know where we were, presumably his world, whatever that was. But we were on a beach, shockingly barren and blue. It was as if my island had been turned to Darkness, warped and washed out, yet still beautiful. I wondered idly if he knew of the beaches of my youth, or maybe he too had memories of such places. That unnerved me somehow. It had to be simply a coincidence.

He let go of my arm then, sighed, and stretched. Daring me to run in a foreign place, cocking his head at me and smiling lazily. "You'll jump through the door to Darkness but you won't run from a lunatic on a strange beach?" He strolled away, turning towards the ocean and leaping down the rocks with ease. He left me no choice but to follow him, out of a strange curiosity to know him and to know Roxas, and to understand just how his life was so intertwined with mine. I was so intent on my thoughts I didn't realize I was falling until it was too late. I tripped and slid down the rock that he had jumped off, landing in the sand beside him. He looked at me with a bored expression, as if irritated that I had startled him out of his daze. "Shoulda warned you about that." he flicked a smile.

Before I could reprimand him he turned away again, staring out into the ocean with an intense sadness that unsettled me. I didn't understand at all.

"Of course you know who Roxas is." he said then, quietly. His moods were so foreign to me, changing faster than I could register them. Everything about him unnerved me.

"I really…don't. I've never met him."

"But he sounds familiar to you, I suppose. He's in your memory somewhere, somehow…" He trailed off into an angry mutter. Then, abruptly, "I envy you, Kairi."

And in that moment of reaching out to me, he shattered all my illusions of good and evil, of love and hate, of a world where everything was okay in the end and the bad guys got what they deserved. No - that world didn't exist. There was no sanctuary. There was only pain.

I sat there, stunned, in a silence that betrayed my emotions, unwilling to admit to myself what I had just heard. Yet when I glanced over at my captor and saw the stark, glazed sorrow in his eyes, I knew I hadn't imagined it. But there was nothing to be said.

"You're real," he continued. "You have a chance to live and to love and to be loved. I always thought that if I could be loved, I…wouldn't disappear like the rest. I was so happy when I met him…"

I was still at a loss for words, but a disturbing realization suddenly came to me. I felt as if I had had this conversation before, with a different green-eyed boy, only that one was vying for my love, while this one wished for anything the world would give him. "You remind me of a friend of mine." I said softly, avoiding his blazing eyes that were so painfully familiar. I hadn't seen Riku in over a year, and unlike Sora, I had no idea if he was even still alive.

"Not Sora, I'd assume." but he was looking at me so oddly…

"Riku."

He started, turning away from me quickly. "The traitor, I see."

"It's not like that!" I cried, wanting to defend him. This Axel's hot-headed rage, his refusal to listen and his unstable emotions, as well as his severe paranoia of being left out, of being ignored, all compounded to create a boy so much like Riku it scared me. I didn't know who I was protecting. They even shared eyes. "He was no traitor…just scared," I had always skirted that subject with myself, slightly afraid of it, but more confused than anything.

""There's always another story, isn't there?" he scoffed. "I'm no trator. Roxas is the one who left me."

"Who is Roxas?" I snapped, unable to stop myself. His violent changes made me angry, as if he were altering me as well. "Do you love him? How can you be so angry at him when you claim you can not love? If you never loved him, how could he have betrayed you?" I was screaming now, standing over him, hating him for his hypocrisy, the ease in which he had shattered my world, and yes, even his pain.

"Kairi!" he cried out, reaching towards me.

"Get away!" I jerked back, loathe to let him touch me. "Just leave us all alone! Has it ever occurred to you that we all want to go home, too? That we want our lives back? We're not just tools!" And a year and a half of pent-up sorrow threatened to explode inside of me.

"What I wouldn't give for a life to have back." he said languidly, tossing his hair and eyeing me in a way at once both pleading and sinister. "All I ever had was Roxas, and Sora took him away."

"We don't even know him!"

"No but you will when I have my way." That stopped me, and I allowed him to snake up, touch my wrist, and guide me back to him again. "Roxas is inside of Sora. I want him back."

"What do you mean?" I asked softly, suddenly terrified, because I knew what he was getting ay long before he said it. Roxas was a Nobody. He was Sora's Nobody. He was created when Sora gave up his humanity to save me, when he became a Heartless to bring me back… There was too much at stake here. There was too much going on behind the scenes that I didn't understand, and it wasn't fair.

"Oh, he doesn't really exist to you, doesn't matter. Like me." he smiled cruelly, leaning in closer and narrowing his eyes.

"What are you going to do to him?" Just ignore him. He wants a fight. He wants a chance to say how horrible I am, how evil I am.

"Save him."

"No! To Sora! What will it do to him?" But I already knew.

"I need to convince him to turn into a Heartless again. Forever. I don't know how he escaped last time. Nobody does that." Something about the way he said that told me he knew that U had played a part in it. "He must die. Only then can Roxas exist again. I've already spent my whole life waiting for him, and I only had him by me a year…"

I was curious despite myself. My world was Sora. Axel's was Roxas. And somehow…they were the same world. "How old are you?" An idle question, but I wanted him to keep talking.

"I don't know. They destroy my memory whenever it suits them. But I always knew he would come. He was my friend…from before. The other part of me, and I knew he would find me. And just over a year ago, he suddenly showed up, the new Organization member, number XIII, and I knew…"

That was why he reminded me of Riku. He hadn't lost his memory. He wasn't much older than Roxas. It all fell into place them. That was why he knew so much about me and Sora, why he was so jealous and hurt, why he was so familiar. And I was unsure of the world in a new way, for it occurred to me then that I had never really _known_ Riku. I never knew who or what he was jealous of. Don't think about it.

"But don't you understand?" I tried to make him see me for who I was, what I was, just another kid trapped in something bigger. "To bring him back, to kill Sora, would only transfer the pain."

"Better you than me." he shrugged.

"You'll never get him back." I snapped. What was the point? He could only see himself, just as I could only see myself…

"What, you're going to protect him? You haven't done so very much, waiting a whole damn year."

I couldn't tell him the truth. I couldn't tell him that I had forgotten about Sora through some inexplicable means. I didn't understand it, and though I knew it wasn't any fault of mine, I didn't dare admit it. He had backed me into a corner and he knew it. He knew what had happened to my memory and he had no intention of telling me. So I said the only thing I could say.

"I love him." I said softly.

"And I love Roxas." He was staring at me so intently I felt as if he were trying to steal away my own expressions and make them his own. But he was running in circles around me, betraying us both with his words. One moment he bitterly proclaimed he was unable to love, and the next he was vowing to save the one he most cared for. "Would you kill for Sora?" he persisted. "Would you do anything to be with him again?" His eyes were shining, through from tears or madness I could not tell. "I know you would. I'm just doing what you're doing. I'm going to destroy Sora to get Roxas back, just as you wish to destroy Roxas by keeping Sora. Only one of them can exist. And even if there was another way, only one of us can be happy. Only one of us can be loved. I have more at stake than you. I'll fade out forever while you can live without Sora. I have nothing and no one but Roxas." And I knew in a way that he was right. My year of sorrow without Sora was his of joy with Roxas.

At that moment he reached out and gently brushed the hair from my face. Startled by this act of kindness, I looked him straight in the eyes and he did not look away. And I saw everything. A thousand images of a friendship doomed, a thousand pictures of a love fated to die, drawn by my hand.

Axel walking this same beach, laughing and joking with a boy who looked so much like my Sora. They both looked so much younger. Organization members or not, they were innocent. Axel had gone to hell and back with Roxas, fighting alongside him for a whole year against shadowy figures who were so hateful of all they were. No - they never made it back from hell, and they perhaps they never even went. They were always there. I saw fully the agony of being a Nobody, of being a tool and a toy of all the greater forces. They were beings born from the Darkness within others, and they were damned forever to know what they were. To try to live and love, knowing you aren't worthy, aren't even able, to do so. Knowing that you shouldn't even exist, and you are despised. A conscious damnation. I saw why Axel clung so desperately to Roxas, his savior in the other world and in this one, the only person who ever showed him love and treated him like a human, who proved to him that there was a chance to be something more than they were, who showed him he had a heart. He had waited for Roxas, knowing he would save him…just as Riku and I had waited for Sora…

I knew he had a heart. He was no different from me, from Sora. They were all just like us. They wanted to live and to love so desperately that they failed to realize their own capabilities. Axel was proof. Madman though he was, his love for Roxas was as vibrant and as true as anything, and possibly more beautiful…

"Bring him back to me…" he whispered, his eyes never leaving mine. "You're the only one who can, _Namine_…" His expression did not change, but there was such vehemence in that last word that I prayed it wasn't meant for me. But I knew it was. By my design. I tore my gaze from him then, to look down at the hands no longer mine closing a sketchbook, the last page showing a red-haired figure on the beach. Alone, his gloved hands stretching out towards nothing, his eyes dead and vacant under the tears. Roxas was gone.

I shuddered and his eyes bore into mine. They had never left. I looked down at my hands again. Nothing. Stumbling back from him now. "What are you DOING to me? Don't call me that!" I covered my ears and shut my eyes tightly and screamed. "_I never meant to hurt you! Just leave me alone!_"

Several minutes passed that way, the only sound my heavy breathing as I struggled not to cry. It wasn't fair. Why could only one of us be happy? Was I so wrong? It took me a minute to realize he was calling my name, softly, as if he didn't really want me to hear him.

"Kairi, Kairi, I'm sorry…I didn't mean to say that…" Pleading.

I wanted to save him. I opened my eyes and he sat there, kneeling before me, both hands flat out on the sand. A strange desperation was in his eyes, in his every moment, and I wanted to reach out to him. I wanted him to feel light and love, and I knew that if I could save him, I would. It would be what Sora would want, to make someone else, anyone else, smile. But I knew that I could do nothing. Axel was a being born of Darkness, and in the same Darkness he was to die. I could do nothing but turn away from him.

And I couldn't even do that. I stood there, avoiding his gaze now, not moving away from him either. Acting like he didn't exist. It didn't occur to me just how much that hurt him until I heard him move. I started to look up but he was too fast for me as he lashed out, grabbing my upper arm and throwing me to the ground. I didn't even have a chance to yell. He wrenched my head around, holding my chin and forcing me to look at him

"Do you see me now? Do you know that I exist? You can't pretend I'm not because real, because you are guilty." he hissed, his chin jutting out angrily, his thin face even paler than before.

"That's not what I mean!" I convulsed, wanting him to let me go, yet terrified of his volatile emotions. So much like Riku… "I just don't know what to say! I wish we could both be happy, but I don't see how turning a living boy, a loved boy, into a Heartless will bring anyone back to you. How could hurting someone else make you happy?" I shouldn't have used those words. Living, loved. They echoed hollowly between us, and I desperately wanted to apologize. But they were already out, and they had clearly stung him deeply, for even as I spoke them, the flames died in his eyes and were replaced by a hideous emptiness. Except this time…it was definitely by me.

"Is that all I am? Dead and unloved? Am I really…nobody?" he reached up and stroked my face with his other hand and I couldn't turn away, enraptured by his sorrow. "Can you see me, hear me, feel me?"

And he again shocked me as he leaned in and kissed me, ever so gently, taking me up in his arms and holding me against him. He was strong, slim but made of fire and whipcord, yet I knew somehow he wouldn't hurt me as he buried his face in my hair and sighed. I couldn't help but wonder what it was like to be loved by a being so passionately alive as he was, so devastatingly aware of the cruelty of the world, and I wanted him to be happy. God, I wanted him to be happy. I hugged him back, wrapping my arms tightly around his neck, hiding my own face in his hair as I tried hard not to cry, breathing in the smoke and fire and cologne he smelled of. For the first time in my life, I truly hated the world. I hated everything but the creature in my arms.

"Axel, I'm sorry." I murmured in his ear. Those three words broke us, and he pulled back, suddenly holding me at arms' length.

"It won't work, will it?" he said hoarsely. I shook my head silently, grateful for his intuition. I didn't have to say the words to him. Instead, I took his hand in mine and pulled his glove off. Metal bands glinted off his narrow fingers in the dying sunlight as I held his hand to my face. I felt his body convulse, as if he had never felt a human touch before.

I don't know how long we sat there, studying one another, and then sitting side by side, hands locked together as we both stared out to sea. The sun set and I must have dozed off at one point, feeling safe, for I awoke in the dark to find Axel curled around me, his head in my lap. The moonlight was just bright enough for me to study his face, so white and pale. He lashes were startlingly long, brushing over the tattoos beneath his eyes, tiny crosses of a purplish black. I wondered idly what they meant, watching him breathe. His expression was slightly pained, his eyebrows drawn up and his cheeks hollow. His dreams were ones I knew without knowing. He would try to save Roxas, regardless of what he knew to be true. He had to try, and though I knew we would be again enemies, I couldn't blame him. He loved him.

"I know." I leaned over, letting my hair fall in a curtain over my face and his, whispering to him in the dark. "And I know that someday you'll be with him again, even if it takes you years to understand, even if you're both different…but it will all be okay someday. You won't go unloved. You won't disappear. You aren't a Nobody. Because, even now…" I glanced up over the waters, surprised at my emotions. "You are loved."

And I knew without looking that in his sleep, a smile flickered across his face for the briefest of moments. By my design.


End file.
